The Finish Line

It was anticlimactic, really, but that´s normal. As I´ve read on multiple occasions, it´s the journey, not the destination, that matters. This was especially true for my six-month trip, which, until the last two months, never had a specific destination. The last week of cycling from Kampala to Nairobi felt like an unimportant appendage to the body of the journey that, like a pinky toe, was necessary to properly conclude it but that, if overlooked, wouldn´t have been missed much. Adding to this feeling were plain scenery, appalling road surfaces, heavy, fast traffic, and an impatience to reach the end of the road. In the end, it proved too unenjoyable and unnecessary for us; after a week of riding, we took a minibus for the final stretch to Nairobi.

The most exciting and interesting point of the last haul was standing at the beginning of the Nile River, just outside of Jinja, Uganda on the northern edge of Lake Victoria. However, like many tourist attractions, it looks more exciting and interesting on paper than in the flesh. In fact, if it weren´t for the toll booth, convenient handifcraft shops, restaurant, and tasteful billboard telling us that we were at a somewhat important place on earth, we might not have given it a second thought. A huge bust of Gandhi, who´s ashes were apparently cast into the source of the Nile, lent an air of dignity to the scene. More interesting was the group of Indian Hindus dressed in ochre robes praying with the water. As the man leading the prayer explained to us, the source of the Nile is a source of life, and therefore sacred.

The extent of Africa´s poverty continued to surprise me, even after six months of travelling there. The highway we followed for a large part was the main link between Kampala and Nairobi, two of the largest and most important cities in the East African Community (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania). This made the highway arguably one of the two or three most important roads of the three countries, and it was the worst paved road I´d cycled on during the whole trip. Choppy and pockmarked with gaping cracks and potholes often the size of manholes, and long bereft of any shoulder, it looked as if the asphalt had been poured from a crop duster and simply left to dry.

My dissatisfaction with the last days of riding was, like most dissatisfaction, largely psychological. In my mind, the journey had already effectively ended over a month before when we cycled out of Queen Elizabeth National Park in western Uganda and boarded a bus to Kampala. That was the conclusion of the adventure for me, after having cycled through three national parks, numerous wilderness areas and countless archaic villages. Being back on the main highway and at the epicenter of Western encroachment was just part of a dull but inevitable shift from 3rd world adventures back to 1st world obligations. Nairobi, the largest and most modern city of my trip, served as a suitable finish line and helped to finalize that transition.

Africa Was Boring

Genocidal maniacs, civil war, disease, starvation, Kwashiorkor, Kalashnikov-toting rebels, where was it all? I didn´t see it. In Tanzania and Burundi we witnessed some refugee movement from the civil war in neighboring DRC, and I passed through a country that had a genocide 12 years ago, but I never would have guessed it if I hadn´t known the history. Disease I saw a bit of, mostly in the big cities where the afflicted take to the streets to beg. The images we normally associate with Africa as reported in the media are isolated incidents that typically affect a tiny area compared with the vastness of the continent. Basically, I saw loads of strong, healthy people going about their daily lives in relative peace and happiness, regardless of the undeniably poor and simple conditions. My biggest complaint was that they always tried to overcharge me, but, as a passing representative of the wealth-endowed culture, it was understandable that they wanted to seize their oppurtunity. Even that was easily brushed off most of the time as "the bargaining challenge," offset as it was by the unfailing friendliness and helpfulness that we encountered everywhere.


Note: This post is pretty late. I flew out of Nairobi on 9/26/06, after 3500km of cycling and at least 2000 of bus and boat. Now I´m in Germany focusing on my future, but although I´m out of Africa, Africa is not out of me, so check back in a few months for retrospective posts.